Pro-lifers, please stop doing that (scary pictures!)

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In this post, I make three polite suggestions for the pro-life movement. As for abortion, I have not decided yet, and I respect and are open to the opinions of people on both sides of the debate. However, some offensive rhetoric on the part of anti-abortion activists is so annoying as to make me want to go pro-choice just to Avoid Those Obnoxious People.

I am not talking about clinic bombings. Those are extreme acts that don't typify the movement as a whole. I'm talking about the everyday rhetoric in the pro-life movement, and how it can be dishonest, exaggerated, and otherwise obnoxious.

Three pleases-

Please learn what partial-birth abortion really is.
Every other day, my local newspaper runs an ad about the horrors of partial-birth abortion, which is indeed a very gruesome procedure. Conservatives use the shock value attached to partial-birth abortion to provoke outrage. However, they typically neglect to mention the circumstances under which PBAs are performed.

"Abortion-on-demand" abortions, also known as terminations of unwanted pregnancies, typically occur in the first trimester; women who don't want a child for whatever reason end pregnancies very early. Partial-birth abortion is used when a pregnancy needs to be terminated late, in the last few months. How could these women be so cruel as to change their minds about wanting a baby at the last minute? Answer: they don't. That b***h Nature makes it necessary.

Partial-birth abortion (which comprises less than 1% of abortions) is an operation which is undertaken in two basic situations: unexpected health problems arise in the second or third trimester which threaten the mother's life, or the child is revealed to have severe birth defects. Women with sudden-onset preeclampsia or placetal separation with associated hemorrhage stand a good chance of dying if a pregnancy isn't terminated. Oftentimes, the child doesn't have much of a chance either. OBGYNs refer to this as "bailing out" of a dangerous pregnancy. As for birth defects, there are some horrific ones, many of which are incompatible with life, that are only discovered at the five-month mark or later. Examples follow:
Cogenital icthyosis

A severe skin disorder which is almost always fatal and emotionally traumatic for all involved. Can only be seen in ultrasounds during the last months.
Anencepaly

A neural tube defect characterized by lack of a skull and most of the brain. Typically, only the brainstem remains, although even chunks of this may be missing. Inevitably, the infant will be unconscious, blind, and deaf, and will be fated to die within the first two hours of life no matter what is done.
Patau Syndrome (trisomy 13)

A chromosomal abnormality that causes severe birth defects of all kinds. The few of these infants that have lived past their fifth birthdays all have profound mental retardation.

Partial-birth abortion is not abortion as we even think of it. It is a stop-gap medical procedure similar to that of ending an ectopic pregnancy. A necessary evil.

Please stop calling abortion 'genocide.'
If life begins at conception, then abortion is mass murder. But is it genocide? All sources say no.

A mass murder does not become a genocide because of actions taken, but rather because of the motives of the perpetrators. Genocide is a coinage that means "race-murder," and it refers to mass murder which is motivated by the desire to exterminate a race, religion, or nationality. In the US, abortion is almost never motivated by race. More black women than white women have abortions, true, but this is a sociological accident. Even if abortion is murder, it's not "race-murder".

Please stop comparing abortion to the Holocaust.
This one really drives me up the wall and across the ceiling. It is not just an erroneous comparison, but an offensive one, and I am not a young woman who is easy to offend.

If one wants to compare something to a grand historical tragedy, one has to make sure that three things line up: number of people killed, the level of suffering endured by the victims, and the motivations of and political system used by the perpetrators. Assuming that life begins at conception, pro-lifers have a suitable body count. Unfortunately for pro-lifers, modern abortion docs are not motivated by race, as I have pointed out above (the Nazis were all about Race, with a capital 'R.' Race Race Race Race Race Race Race). It is in "level of suffering endured by the victims" that we reach the great sticking point and learn why this analogy is so offensive.

Let us make the wild conjecture that a fetus at any age can feel pain. Then let us compare the suffering our sensitive fetus would endure with the unpleasant sensations visited upon Henri, a hypothetical thirtysomething Jew who died in, let's say, Bergen-Belsen.

In the modern day, abortions are performed mostly with vacuum devices. The pressure causes death by crushing (we are operating under the assumption that this could be called death) almost immediately. For the sensitive fetus, this would mean an out-of-the-blue blast of pain followed by oblivion. Yet unconscious, he will be unaware of what will or has transpired.

Henri has spent nine years tirelessly trying to support his family of five in a country where he is barely allowed to do business. He is routinely humiliated in public, and people throw rocks at his children whenever they walk outside. One day, he and his family are arrested on no charge and driven onto a cattle car with forty (at least) other people, and are stuck there, in the dark, without water, for three days. When Henri arrives at Bergen-Belsen, his wife and children are taken somewhere else, probably to die (and Henri knows it). He goes through the terrifying and degrading two-day introduction to camp life, and is shaved, humiliated, numbered, and otherwise psychologically tortured. When this ends, the physical torture can begin. Our Henri sleeps with two other guys, none of whom speak his language, in a bed designed for one. He's starved, of course, and forced to work at pointless, exhausting menial tasks from dawn to dusk every single day. On average, he is beaten or whipped about sixteen times a week. He somehow ekes out an existence for six months, but then contracts dysentery. After coming under heavy ridicule from the guards, he is sent to the infirmary, where he tries to shake his painful and disgusting infection. After three days, the doctors realize that he's not going to be able to work anytime soon, so he is matter-of-factly sent to the gas chamber, where he drowns in his own hemorrhaging blood surrounded by 100 other wailing, thrashing people.

In short: if our Henri could hear you comparing abortion to the Holocaust, he would be MAJORLY PISSED.

Okay, I think I'm done. For now.

Last edited by MissPickwickian on 16 Sep 2008, 5:46 am, edited 1 time in total.

That is a nice post, but don't think you'll be able to get through to pro-life religious weirdos.

Compelling argument, but I dunno. I think you could've given me more nightmares if you worked that much harder.

I didn't want this to be a pro-choice post, but an observational one. I still may have angered the weirdos. Thanks!

MissPickwickian is RIGHT! Abortion should be mandatory!! Gee whiz, why don't you pro-life people understand that?

A very well-made argument, despite being incredibly disturbing. Especially some of those pictures... Sheesh. The first one, it looked uncomfortable for the kid to be alive at all. Though I guess it's at the same level of pro-lifers showing off pictures of aborted fetuses in order to guilt or scare people into not supporting abortion.

Unfortunately, I don't think that this will actually get a response from many of the people you're trying to reach with this, as a lot of them have a seeming aversion to compelling arguments. If I'm wrong, however, it will be interesting to see their perspectives given this information.

In my own subjectively idealistic youth, I was a militant pro-lifer. As the years have gone by, my militancy has waned, but I am still pro-life ... in principle.

HOWEVER, I am willing to admit that in some cases, there may be some justification to the opposite view.

Besides ... I'm a man ... whythehell would I ever need an abortion? It isn't MY choice to make...

Die now or endure suffering for <x> amount of time...

I am not against abortion as I understand why some of these actions are undertaken by girls of all ages.

Well, I think that the post and the pictures might piss them off or most likely to strenght their beliefs, and this is why I believe it would, pro-lifers here on WP could argue that abortion is a form of genocide for the purpose of getting rid of people who are different, in this case, autism. So probably this could feed their beliefs rather than convince them otherwise. Nevertheless, I agree with you, in my humble opinion, abortion would be the most humane thing to do in the cases you ilustrated.

A part from that, until the world becomes a perfect paradise for anyone to live in, then I would start to think this pro-life thing to really make sense.

Last edited by greenblue on 14 Sep 2008, 11:17 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Exactly, I am pro-choice by principle, in which the woman, which I think she could be more affected physical, emotionally and phycological to this than a man would, probably due to them becoming pregnant. As I am not a woman I really don't feel like having the right to demand a woman what she should do with her body on this matter.

Although, I, in principle, would be against it, after the first trimester of pregnancy has ended, although I am not so sure.

Beautiful topic. Gross too.

But no, its the sort of thought provoking topics I love to see.

My only issue is with the third argument. As it stands now, yes, abortion is not genocide. However, simplistic NT's tend to lump all genetic mutations together, and Autism will be lumped with those pictures you showed above (even though it is unwarranted). Once a reliable genetic test for autism is found, those Autism Spoken For mothers will insist on abortions for every autistic fetus, on account of how they are just as "defective" as those examples you showed.. even though in reality autistics are capable of living the same lifespan as a "normal" person, Autism Spoken For will merely argue that their child will not lead a "normal" life, and therefore will be in pain the entire time. Since The Almighty Autism Spoken For knows this for a fact, they will continue to erase this "blight" upon the human genome, until every last autistic is exterminated.

Abortion can be necessary. Those examples you showed are proof. The fact that it can save the life of the mother is proof. I just think its incredibly overused. Many pregnant women get abortions because it's inconvenient for them to have a child, and they were too dumb to use a contraceptive (This doesn't count for rape victims however, since they didn't choose to have sex.) There are less extreme alternatives: surrogate mothers, adoption, etc. I think abortion should be legal, but its use should be extremely limited to possible death of mother or fetus, rape victims, or fatal congenital defect (emphasis on fatal, meaning child will not survive long once born)

The pictures:

I actually chose some of the ones that were less horrifying, so as not to draw the Wrath of Mod (even though there is no wrongplanet rule regarding disturbing but nonviolent photographs). Wanna have nightmares every night for the next month? Google Image search the conditions I have listed.

Was it a shameless appeal to emotion? Probably. But I only wanted to show the extreme situations in which PBAs are actually performed. Even abortions of fetuses shown to be flawed through genetic testing take place early in the pregnancy. A PBA is always a sad, sad situation, but not because the doctor is evil.

Oh, and here are three pictures of kittens, a reward for your enduring the others:





You're welcome.

Are you trying to make it sound like you're doing us a favor?

MissPickwickian is getting a massive respect (*said in Ali G voice*).

I couldn't agree more. especially nr3- I am allergic to all Holocaust comparisons, especially those made by pro-lifers and by my fellow vegetarians who can be extremist weirdos too.

I hate kittens, they taste funny.